Photos key to ex-soldier's trial

PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) - Defense Attorney Patrick Bouldin showed jurors a photograph of then-Army Pvt. Steven Dale Green, just out of basic training. Then he showed another of Green taken shortly after his arrest by the FBI a year later.

"How did we go from here to here?" Bouldin asked at the opening of Green's federal trial on charges of raping and murdering an Iraqi teenager and shooting her family to death.

The images were key to the defense's case that something went horribly wrong in Iraq. And such visual elements also proved critical for prosecutors in rendering their account of how and why the al-Janabi family died on March 12, 2006, in a village not far from Baghdad.

Green, a 24-year-old from Midland, Texas, was convicted May 7 of multiple charges that included conspiracy, rape and murder. He was tried in civilian court because he was discharged from the Army before charges were brought.

Federal prosecutor Brian Skaret told jurors in opening statements there would be no DNA, no fingerprints and no physical evidence. Instead, Skaret said, they'd hear from witnesses and see photographs.

Jurors were shown dozens of photos at trial, ranging from the mundane to the gruesome. They were expected to continue deliberating Thursday on whether to sentence Green to death or life in prison. They have dozens of photos to review as part of the evidence.

Robert Batey, a professor of criminal law at Stetson University College of Law in Gulfport, Fla., said the heavy reliance on visual evidence is unusual. He called that an apparent attempt to overcome what he calls the "CSI effect."

The popular TV show has created expectations among jurors that every case involves DNA evidence that links a criminal to a crime, Batey said. The use of photos to add credibility to the witnesses and give the jurors something tangible could help overcome that.

"The prosecution certainly has a good excuse for a lack of physical evidence, that it's in a war zone half a world away," Batey explained.

Jurors had computer-monitor sized screens in front of them, while the gallery had a large-screen monitor for viewing photos and exhibits. Both the prosecution and defense made liberal use of the electronic features of the retrofitted courtroom of a Depression-era building.

When prosecutors needed to show jurors where soldiers were stationed the day of the attack, up popped a view of a traffic checkpoint, a stone building surrounded by a fence. Defense attorneys used similar scenes of a checkpoint, showing a dilapidated building missing windows and affording scant protection.

When defense attorneys wanted to tell jurors about Green's slain colleagues, images of smiling men in Army uniforms appeared as defense attorneys described their deaths in combat.

Touching on the brutality of the crime, prosecutors showed jurors pictures of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi's charred remains - only part of a hand and parts of legs were recognizable. Jurors saw others of the al-Janabi family's bodies on a blood-spattered floor, felled by shotgun blasts.

The al-Janabi images hovered on screens anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, prompting some in the courtroom gallery to turn their heads.

"This is pretty grisly stuff, isn't it?" Assistant U.S. Attorney James Lesousky asked former Sgt. Anthony Yribe, who took photographs as part of the military investigation. "But, you've probably seen worse in Iraq."

Jurors also saw gruesome pictures of what soldiers like Green faced in Iraq, such as the sight of an Iraqi man with half his face missing after a machine gun blast.

Bouldin asked Yribe if soldiers routinely photographed Iraqis killed in the conflict. Yribe said it was a fairly common occurrence. Then, Bouldin noted, there were no pictures of slain American soldiers on the battlefield for jurors to see.

"That's because of a policy against taking pictures of dead American soldiers," Bouldin said, just before prosecutors objected.

Bouldin dropped the line of questioning, but the image of the dead Iraqi lingered on screen for a moment.